Emoticons, memes and cyberbullying: gender equality in Colombia

Abstract

In this paper I want to analyze bullying and cyber bullying for the Colombian case. I want to show the role social media play in the dissemination of hurtful words and symbols, especially emoticons and memes. This paper analyzes the long history of social mobilization, where the Courts have played an important role to advance their rights and how, in some cases, social media, memes and emoticons have been used to express agreement or disagreement with this struggle. We wish to analyze three cases: one where words were used to hurt an adolescent, who killed himself as a result of a context of exclusion and institutionalized bullying. In another case, at the Universidad de los Andes, in Colombia, a group of students created a Facebook page to attack lower class students in the University and even some professors whom they did not like. One of them was Prof. Carolina Sanín. In one of the posts in the Facebook page she was depicted as a battered woman, and this was perceived as a threat for her feminist activism. The University, instead of supporting their professor, decided to expel her because of her criticism toward the institution. The third one is related to the election of the first woman and openly gay person to be elected as major of Bogotá, Colombian capitol, and the use or lack thereof of her sexual identity. At the end, I want to analyze whether these emoticons, symbols, pictures or expressions fall within the reach of freedom of expression, according to Colombian Constitutional Court and the Inter-American Court of Human Rights.